NEW MINISTER NEEDS A PLAN FOR JOBS

Labor congratulates Senator Sinodinos on his appointment as the new Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science.

Senator Sinodinos is the fourth Liberal Minister to take on this important portfolio in less than four years.

If the Turnbull Liberals can ever drag their attention away from their own jobs, they need to get down to devising a real plan for real jobs for Australian workers.

Australian businesses and workers are looking to the Turnbull Government for a comprehensive plan on jobs.

The Liberals have no plan for the hundreds of thousands of Australians whose livelihoods are on the line when car manufacturing shuts down at the end of 2017.

They have no plan to support Australia’s strategically significant shipbuilding industry, which is currently on life support in an attempt to sandbag the seat of Christopher Pyne.

They have no plan to back Australian steel production, with foreign and potentially substandard steel being dumped into the Australian market at artificially low prices, hurting local jobs and risking the safety of buildings and infrastructure.

The Liberals have no plan to repair the damage done by the $3 billion in cuts that the Abbott-Turnbull regimes have inflicted on Australia’s science, research and innovation community.

Malcolm Turnbull likes to talk about innovation, but talk is cheap. Businesses need stability and confidence to invest in job-creating research and development – not this Ministerial revolving door.

If the new Minister is serious about innovation and jobs, he needs a plan to reinvest in Australian industry, science and research.

Only then can we make the new discoveries, develop new technologies, and create the new advanced manufacturing jobs of the future.